AN INTEGRATED DESIGN, ENGINEERING, AND MANUFACTURING ENVIRONMENT TO ENABLE THE 3D PRINTING REVOLUTION

摘要

Although 3D printing, or in general, additive manufacturing (AM) has developed for over three decades to include many different processes and materials, the adoption of AM in industrial manufacturing has been limited, possibly because it is significantly different from the traditional subtractive manufacturing processes which dominated manufacturing in the past. This domination resulted in computer aided design/manufacturing/engineering (CAD/CAM/CAE) tools that are predisposed to the subtractive paradigm. Although there has been some development of AM-focused software tools, to our knowledge, there has never been a single, integrated software tool that addresses all aspects of AM processes. Instead, one needs to use many different software packages to enable the entire AM process, hindering productivity and creativity. To address this gap, we have developed a novel, fully-integrated, computer aided design, engineering, and manufacturing software tool to aid all aspects of the AM process. Our tool consists of modules that support visualization and processing of end-user’s CAD models, automated design optimization, additive finite element analysis (AFEA), print and process simulation, that together assist the central goal of toolpath generation. The components are fully integrated into a single graphical user interface (GUI) which is portable to multiple hardware platforms. An important design consideration was to make the platform intuitive to use in order to empower non-experts in the areas of optimization, FEA, and toolpath planning.